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Tuesday, July 25, 2017

A Slow Start

I’ve been making a lot of projects from stash this year. The
packing and unpacking that goes along with a move has a way of showcasing the
amount of materials one has accumulated over the years. And I’ve accumulated a
lot.

As I was organizing my yarn, I kept coming back to three
groups of partial skeins: eleven colors of Sublime Yarns Lustrous Extra Fine Merino DK, five of Classic Elite Yarns Moorland,
and one of Moda Dea Eclipse (formerly made by Coats).
Each yarn has some wool and manufactured fibers such as nylon or acrylic. The
Moorland also has alpaca and mohair.

The colors work remarkably well together, considering that
they were purchased at different times for different projects. A minor
challenge is that Lustrous and Moorland are both DK weight while Eclipse is
worsted weight. I used some Eclipse in the original Lustrous project; I know
the difference will be noticeable but not off-putting.

By far, the yarn that I have the most of is the green
Moorland. I started knitting the bottom of the dress in green, thinking that I
would follow it up by also using it at the neckline and for the crochet trim.
About a dozen rows in I started to think that because I would be moving from
US-7 (4.5 mm) to US-6 (4.0 mm) needles, it would make more sense to start with
the thicker Eclipse yarn. I frogged those initial rows.

As I began to reknit the dress, I came across a few broken
spots in the skein. I didn’t think too much of them; I simply created joins and
kept moving. After I switched to the next color, however, the Eclipse broke as
I made a stitch. The Eclipse has been in my stash since 2008. I don’t know if
age played into the break but I think it’s possible, as I didn’t see any
evidence of bugs or other critters. In retrospect I wonder if I
actually dropped a stitch but saw the yarn ends from one of the previous breaks. Not wanting to take any chances, I pulled the stitches off the needles and threw away all of the Eclipse.

I returned to my initial plan of starting with the green Moorland and am about 18 rows into my third attempt at this dress, which
is my farthest so far. The bright side of the second attempt is that I had the
presence of mind to check the size before I threw away the knitting.
The project notes in Ravelry show some people saying the pattern runs large and
others saying it runs small. Based on my early results, I think it runs large. I had started making the larger of the two sizes,
but am now knitting the smaller size.

Between fewer stitches for the smaller size and staying the
course with my latest yarn choices, the project is moving along much more
quickly now. I hope that next week I’ll be able to report progress beyond row
18.